Simultaneous Disasters in Southeast Asia: Is Risk Outpacing Resilience?

Since Southeast Asian leaders signed the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER) in 2005, the region has prioritized developing national and regional disaster management capabilities to respond to disasters. However, the recent back-to-back disasters that occurred between July and August 2018 tested the response capacities of national governments and the humanitarian community. Parts of Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines battled floods of varying severity induced by seasonal monsoon rains, tropical storms and a dam collapse on a tributary of the Mekong River. Meanwhile, Indonesia's Lombok Island, West Nusa Tenggara was hit by multiple earthquakes and aftershocks between 29 July and 19 August. The ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre) reported that at the peak of these disasters, over 588,000 people were displaced and more than 5.2 million people in Southeast Asia were affected. Against the backdrop of recent disasters generating simultaneous responses, this chapter makes key observations on Southeast Asia's ability to meet the immediate needs of disasteraffected communities while building greater disaster resilience for the future. It assesses the (i) institutionalization of disaster management in ASEAN; (ii) localization of disaster response; and (iii) opportunities for financial risk management for building disaster-resilient communities.

ASEAN in the Eye of the Storm—Institutionalization of Disaster Management in ASEAN

In assessing current and future disaster management capabilities, this chapter focuses on the floods in Laos and Cambodia after the collapse of a saddle dam of the Xe Pian-Xe Nam Noy hydropower project, floods in Myanmar caused by heavy monsoon rainfall and a breached dam in the Bago region, and the earthquakes and aftershocks in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. It identifies the evolution of a regional mechanism to respond to disasters grounded in the legallybinding AADMER. This agreement was ratified by all ASEAN member states and came into force in 2009 and represented ASEAN's regional commitment to respond to disasters. Its objectives are to provide effective disaster management mechanisms and to have ASEAN member states “jointly respond to disaster emergencies” through regional cooperation. AADMER's most significant contribution has been to institutionalize disaster management within and between ASEAN member states.